Ultrasound- guided fine needle aspiration cytology and cell block in the diagnosis of focal liver lesions at Khartoum Hospital, Sudan

Background: The appropriate clinical management of various hepatic lesions depends on accurate diagnosis. Fine needle aspiration and cell block have gained popularity because they are convenient, minimally invasive, quick and have good performance profiles.Objective: To investigate the cytomorphological features of distinctive non-neoplastic and neoplastic lesions of the liver and to evaluate the sensitivity, specificity and diagnostic accuracy of ultrasound- guided (USG) fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) and cell block in the diagnosis ofliver diseases at Khartoum Teaching Hospital.Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted at Khartoum Teaching Hospital, Sudan during the period of November 2008 to October 2011. One hundred and five cytological materials were collected from patients with focal liver lesions who referred after initial clinical and radiologicalassessment for ultrasound–guided fine needle aspiration cytology (USG -FNAC).Results: The age of the patients ranged from 5- 60 years and 64 (61%) of these patients were males. Out of 105 investigated samples 76 (72.4%) and 41(39.0%) were malignant by cytology and cell block respectively. Out of these 105 samples, 71 were investigated by both cytology and cell blocks and were included in the final analyses of the FNAC in comparison to cell block. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value of the cytology were 100% (93.0 – 100%), 63.3% (45.2 – 79.0%), 78.8% (66.2 – 88.3%) and 0 (0 – 14.6%), respectively.Conclusion: Thus, USG -FNAC is a sensitive but not specific method in differentiating the benign and malignant focal liver lesions. Differentiation between primary liver malignant lesions and metastatic lesion needs adjunct techniqueKey words: neoplastic lesion, non-neoplastic lesio

Detection of bocavirus in children suffering from acute respiratory tract infections in Saudi Arabia.

Human bocavirus (HBoV) was recently discovered in children with respiratory distress and/or diarrhea. To our knowledge, no previous study has reported the existence of bocavirus in Saudi Arabia. Swabs samples from 80 children with respiratory tract infections were examined for the presence of HBoV. Real-time polymerase chain reaction was used as a sensitive method to detect the HBoV. Direct gene sequencing was used to determine the genotype of the detected virus isolates. HBoV was detected in 22.5% of the examined patients. The NP1 partial gene sequence from all patients showed that the circulated strains were related to HBoV-1 genotype. Most of HBoV infected patients showed evidence of mixed coinfection with other viral pathogens. The current study clearly demonstrated that genetically conserved HBoV1 circulates in Saudi Arabia. Interestingly, most of the HBoV1 infected cases were associated with high rates of co-infections with other viruses

Phylogenetic analysis of Saudi HBoV1 isolates.

<p>The phylogenetic tree with 1,000 bootstrap replicates was generated using the Clustal W program in the MEGA 4.0 software package and based on partial NP-1 sequences of the HBoV strains. Samples obtained in the current study from children with acute respiratory distress in Saudi Arabia are in red. HBoV1 strains are presented in black, HBoV 2 strains are presented in blue, HBoV3 strains are presented in green while HBoV4 isolate is presented in brown.</p

Common respiratory viruses among HBoV infected children.

<p>Common respiratory viruses among HBoV infected children.</p

Demographic and clinical data of children suffered from respiratory distress in the current study.

a<p>Lower respiratory tract infection.</p>b<p>Upper respiratory tract infection.</p